


Mutants and Mutants: Illyan Thinks

by Ecarden



Series: Mutants and Mutants [3]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Sitting and thinking.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29592030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ecarden/pseuds/Ecarden
Summary: Simon Illyan is sitting in a small room, alone, waiting for his interrogator to come back. What could he possible be thinking?
Series: Mutants and Mutants [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172486
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	Mutants and Mutants: Illyan Thinks

It had, indeed, been a long day.

The interrogation was over, but the evaluation was not. He remained in the chair and closed his eyes, ignoring the imaginary itch that came from knowing he was being watched by people who weren’t his own. They might think him meditating, or waiting, but in truth he was preparing.

Their regulations sat in his chip, as did the horrors they’d shown him and basic information on the organization. Based on what little he had seen, it appeared that this world was relatively similar politically to the basics he had in his chip from a few old histories he’d read. The MRD was funded by Treaty Nations proportionally to their economies, but their recruits came disproportionately from three nations. China, Russia and the United States. Those nations also had disproportionately few mutants captured within their borders, despite housing the majority of MRD personnel.

They were either killing them themselves to manipulate the statistics, being disproportionately effected by the X-Men, or other factors, or they were hoarding their own mutants while using the MRD to limit the supplies of others. Or something else was going on. That was always possible as well.

Given the detailed processing requirements for mutant prisoners, making one disappear once they were in MRD custody would be difficult, but not if they were never turned over in the first place. With more access to their system, he could check the rates of ‘false alarms’ by country.

Based on what his interrogator had said, this was clearly a multinational force. He could anticipate that those assigned to him would either represent every power block within the organization, or only the dominant one. That would tell him whether this was truly an _organization_ , or a collection of warring groups. Then it would simply be a matter of suborning the would-be thieves. Or replacing them with more tractable people. One way or another.

Suborning them would be difficult. Whoever was sent would surely be experienced and have strong local ties.

He ran through the levers by which men are moved. Morality would not work, they would not accept their actions were immoral. Legality wouldn’t work, reading between the lines, this was not an organization bound by rules, but to a cruel purpose. That would need to change.

Money, he did not have. Power, he could not offer. Sex…was not really an option here. Or at least, he hoped it wasn’t. Blackmail was not an option without more information. Elephants…would depend on the individual.

No, what he needed was…momentum. People could be dragged into remarkable things, things it was impossible to back away from later, if the movement was fast enough. He’d have to sever internal loyalties…external loyalties to their home nations were a problem, but not as much of one. He didn’t care about their nations. What had to be changed was the MRD.

Corruption.

His interrogator had intimated it, but they had all these nicely published and completely ignored rules of engagement and rules of care and rules of interrogation. All sorts of things they were probably breaking. Well, he knew they were breaking the ones on interrogation, given only his own experience.

Internal investigators were almost always despised by their fellows. He tried to avoid that hatred within ImpSec, but he knew he’d failed. These days he mostly relied on Imperial Auditors and other external investigators for anything outside standard counter-espionage.

If he threw them into that end of things, he could make the larger organization hate them. Isolate them and take them for his own. Use that power base and revealed corruption to rise.

The problem was, revealing something small internally wouldn’t accomplish anything. If he made a loud enough stink, they might give someone a slap on the wrist, but that wouldn’t have the effect he needed. No, he either needed something so massive that even his team of watchers recognized it as appalling, or something that was revealed more publicly.

Working with the press didn’t come naturally to him, but there would always be news gleaners eager for a hint of corruption around any group. That wouldn’t work with his theory of momentum. It would give his watchers plenty of time to disavow the leaks. Though that might not be believed. One problem with a divided organization was distrust. Leaking it secretly would be difficult, but perhaps not impossible. Slow rise of rumors, denied by furious, loyal agents…

Yes. One way or another that would work. And for those it didn’t work on…they’d throw him at horrors to try to convince him to share his tech. Horrors have a tendency to kill people, even conveniently. And as he got a better feel for the organization, he would be able to identify any wheat in the chaff that he’d seen so far. Choosing people had always been one of his talents.

He had the outline of a plan. Now he just had to carry it out.

Which meant waiting for the bureaucracy to make a decision. Even that would be useful information, but it was also _annoying_.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always welcome.


End file.
